CUNY faculty and staff are denouncing Brooklyn College’s decision to unleash NYPD and campus public safety agents against nonviolent protesters, resulting in unnecessary arrests and the reported Tasering of one protester.
Mobina Hashmi, the co-chair of the PSC chapter at Brooklyn College, speaks to a campus security guard during the demonstration. (Credit: Paul Frangipane)
The trouble all started May 8 on a sunny afternoon on the east quad of Brooklyn College, when several students engaged in a nonviolent and non-disruptive protest against the ongoing starvation in Gaza and the continued military assault. The students erected tents on the quad, resulting in several CUNY security officers shoving protesters and unsuccessfully trying to remove the tents. One campus officer said, as he tried to breach a line of students linking arms around the tents, “The interpretation of the tents is occupation.”
Eventually, NYPD entered the campus while several members of the Brooklyn College faculty, including PSC chapter co-chairs Mobina Hashmi and Joseph Entin, engaged with the security officers in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. The students chanted, “Four hundred thousand dead, you’re harassing us instead,” protecting their tents as campus security officers looked on.
While NYPD officers met with the college president, Michelle Anderson, PSC President James Davis called the CUNY chancellor, Félix Matos Rodríguez, and urged the University not to use law enforcement to clear the demonstration.
But it was no use. At around 6 pm, NYPD Strategic Response Group (SRG) officers were called in and made several arrests, and there was reportedly use of a Taser against one protester.
PSC RESPONSE
The PSC condemned the attack on students and free speech. Davis blasted the decision to call the police in a letter to the chancellor, and dozens of members protested the decision at the CUNY Board of Trustees hearing at LaGuardia Community College on May 12.
“The protesters were engaged in discussion with representatives of the administration and had complied with their request to remove tents that could have been used for an encampment,” Davis said. “Their nonviolent protest did not block access to campus buildings or otherwise interfere with the college’s educational processes or facilities, as prohibited by university regulations on the maintenance of public order. Nonetheless, dozens of officers in riot gear – three times the number of students – confronted the nonviolent protesters as they marched on the quad. They moved the students from their campus onto the city sidewalk.”
In a lengthy statement signed by all the union’s top officers, the union demanded that “the NYPD must be held publicly accountable for its role in escalating violence,” “the SRG must be limited, if not abolished,” “CUNY personnel must be trained in de-escalation and be authorized to perform that role” and “CUNY colleges’ new restrictions on constitutionally protected activity must
be revisited.”
“A formal investigation must be conducted into the extraordinary use of force by the SRG units and other NYPD officers during the street confrontation with protesters outside the campus, and the results of the investigation must be made public. This conduct cannot be normalized,” the statement said. “Preparation to engage constructively and nonviolently in de-escalation in the cases of campus protest must be prioritized. Each college must have on staff representatives of the administration with full training in de-escalation and conflict resolution, including but not limited to campus security. If college administrators will not represent themselves in such situations, trained staff must have the authority to represent them.”
In the wake of the attack on students, the Brooklyn College Student Union circulated a petition demanding amnesty for student protesters and a commitment from the administration to keep NYPD and federal law enforcement agencies off campus.
Anderson, for her part, said that the students had violated CUNY’s Henderson Rules. “CUNY has a zero-tolerance policy for encampments,” she said.
STUDENT RESPONSE
One student protester, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that NYPD officers attacked the students after they had taken down the tents and were attempting to leave campus. “We were ready to disperse, they were essentially trying to keep us from trying to disperse,” he said, noting that he witnessed one officer violently attack several students, including punching two women students in the face.
“About the Henderson Rules and saying we were violating them: It was in fact the police and public safety that impeded students’ academic freedom by blocking buildings and locking down the campus,” the student said. “They were just itching for an excuse to beat up students.”
The Policing and Social Justice Project at BC, headed by sociology professor Alex Vitale, said in a statement: “Ironically, it has been the college’s administration that has disrupted the regular functioning of the campus by closing entrances, restricting access, closing the library and then the entire campus, and forcing classes online. In addition, it was college officials who both brought NYPD officers on campus to use force against members of the college community and then subjected them to additional force and arrests by forcing the demonstration off campus. This makes clear that the ultimate purpose of campus policing and the Henderson Rules, which are supposed to guide their decision-making, is not to protect the well-being or constitutional rights of members of the college community, but instead to enable the CUNY administration to suppress speech based on political content.”
Demonstrators at Brooklyn College link arms after campus security officers attempted to dismantle their tents. (Credit: Paul Frangipane)
CHAOS
On her personal blog, Liv Mariah Yarrow, a professor of classics at BC, summarized the arrest scene: “The chaos was terrifying. People were being hurt. As it became clear I was going to be shoved into that mob, I started stating loudly that I was not going out there and it was not safe. I was told to stand aside. They then started to arrest another male faculty member recording events and trying to return to his office. I started yelling his name at the top of my voice. They released him. Next I saw a hijabi student, who I believe to have been a random bystander, being forced through the narrow gates into the mob violence. I started shouting, ‘Don’t send her out there! It is not safe!’ The officer who had let me remain on campus along with my colleagues then told me: ‘If you keep shouting, I cannot protect you.’”
Roni Natov, a professor of English at BC, said in a letter to President Anderson: “Are you going to stand up against and resist authoritarianism or be a president who promotes free speech and democracy?”
Moustafa Bayoumi, a professor of English at BC, said that while the protest may have been disruptive, the administration should have engaged with them about their demands (among them a divestment from Israel by the college).
“A disruption can and must be met with a response proportional to the disruption itself. In this case, the response should have been dialogue, de-escalation and discussion with the protesters (I willingly offer my services to you as a mediator in the future),” he said in his letter to Anderson. “But your reliance on language such as ‘a zero-tolerance policy’ and actions such as kettling students does not encourage democratic participation but depends instead on the use of overwhelming force to restore ‘order’ by denying people their rights and threatening their well-being.”
Upon hearing the news of the protest and the arrests, Chris Stone, an associate professor of Arabic at Hunter College, rushed to Brooklyn to offer support.
PSC members denounce the use of police against protesters. (Credit: Ari Paul)
“I went to the 72nd Precinct in Brooklyn to offer jail support, where the anger at the police brutality and CUNY and Brooklyn College’s complicity was palpable, as was the sense of solidarity,” he said in recent testimony to the CUNY Board of Trustees. “But there were upsetting scenes as well, such as when a diminutive young woman of color left the precinct after hours of captivity and collapsed in tears into the arms of friends and family, saying and asking repeatedly: ‘They punched me in the face. Why did they punch me in the face?’”
UNDERMINING FAITH
Laura Tanenbaum, the PSC chapter chair at LaGuardia and an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace, also issued testimony to the BoT.
“CUNY rightly prides itself as being an international institution with students from across the globe,” she said. “It also rightly prides itself on standing up to the current administration, with our college presidents well represented in the recent letter to the administration defending academic freedom and diversity. Sadly, the decision to call in the NYPD on May 8 undermines my faith that the institution I’ve worked at for nearly 20 years is actually committed to these values.”
Some observers, including PSC members, decried the police brutality but alleged that Jewish members of the campus community were made unsafe by the protesters’ signs and chants against Zionism, union officials said.
Nicole Lopez-Jantzen, an associate professor of history at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, said in her testimony: “Why was the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group called? This unit is full of officers and supervisors with significant misconduct allegations. Since its creation in 2015, the SRG has been used to brutally suppress dissent and protest, and for types of protests it deems ‘violent’ (which is itself problematic) – such as anti-ICE, Black Lives Matter and pro-Palestinian protests – they use disproportionate force, include mass-arrest, kettling and, as video of Brooklyn College from May 8 shows, punching and Tasing protesters and brutally throwing them to the ground.”
The repression at Brooklyn College was part of an ongoing crackdown on the local and federal level against free speech on college campuses. In New York City, several students at Columbia University have been detained by immigration enforcement for speaking out in favor of human rights for Palestinians, and the Trump administration has withheld funds from Columbia in order to force its administration to suppress academic freedom and free speech.
BAD CLIMATE
Many faculty and staff said that the police response has sullied the climate at BC, to the detriment of students, faculty and staff.
“The police incursion created an atmosphere of violence and intimidation, including physical harm to students,” the leadership of the PSC chapter at BC said in a message to its members. “This is a violation of the college’s responsibility to our students, the mission of CUNY and of our broader commitments to a free and democratic society. This situation could and should have been handled differently, through speaking and listening to defuse and de-escalate. Our students should not have to risk their physical safety and fear deportation or incarceration to voice their ideas freely on campus.”
For Bayoumi, this issue was personal.
“My family knows what it’s like to live under authoritarianism,” he said. “When my father was a university student in Egypt, he too was protesting on his campus for the right to freedom of expression. The police stormed the campus. He was arrested and spent six weeks in prison. That experience led him to the painful decision to leave his family and the country of his birth. It is not hyperbolic to say that what we are witnessing on our campus and across the country bears a significant resemblance to what my father experienced in Egypt. He tells me how familiar all this seems. I can see it for myself.”
